Good idea/Bad idea: extending 2009 draftees

It’s time for another Good Idea/Bad Idea [Editor’s note: we have never done this before, so I have no idea what Devin is talking about]. In this segment I will highlight one good idea and one bad idea involving each team with a prominent member of the 2009 draft class.

Good Idea:

Houston Rockets signing James Harden and his magnificent beard to a five year, $80 million contract extension.

James Harden won the 6th man of the year award last year, and here at the Wages of Wins, most of us think that he was the best shooting guard in the league last year. Recently we’ve been spammingproviding all of you with several articles detailing Harden’s greatness. Like the other top players in the league, even at $16 million a year, Harden is underpaid. Did I mention that he’s only 23 and might be on track to win the Most Improved Player award?

Bad Idea:

Oklahoma City Thunder trading away James Harden instead of giving him the max deal he wanted.

Okay, we’ve talked about this one a lot recently, but let’s go over it one more time: OKC did not have to trade Harden, even if they didn’t want to give him the extension he was asking for. They could’ve left him without an extension, played the season out, and then traded Harden then, or extended him, or extended him and then traded him. Anything except trading him away before the season even started. As it stands, the odds of them winning a championship this season have been significantly reduced.

Good Idea:

Denver Nuggets signing Ty Lawson to a four year, $48 million contract extension

Ty Lawson is much better than Russell Westbrook, who the Thunder signed to a five year, $80 million extension. He produced the fourth-most wins at the point guard position last year, and he’ll be turning 25 on November 3rd. He’s definitely worth the money. (Editor’s Note: And he’s on Devin’s fantasy team.)

Bad Idea:

Letting Denver Nuggets coach George Karl decide who gets what playing time.

As evidenced by Kenneth Faried and JaVale McGee’s minutes, George Karl doesn’t know who should be playing. Kosta Koufos is a good player, so it’s perfectly fine if McGee splits the centre position with him, but switching out Faried for Wilson Chandler and Evan Fournier is just sad. Why sub out your excellent power forward for two guard/forwards? Why not play two of your excellent bigs together for more than 14 minutes per game? George Karl has this thing for “small ball”, even when it doesn’t work. In his pre-season predictions, Arturo has actually started punishing the Nuggets with a ‘coaching adjustment’.

Good Idea:

Golden State Warriors signing Stephen Curry to a four year, $44 million contract extension.

Curry has had trouble staying on the court — he missed 40 games last season — but when he’s on the court, he’s been about as good as Ty Lawson (first game of this year’s season notwithstanding). Curry is actually younger than Lawson too, as well as a better shooter. I would hate to see Curry become another Brandon Roy, but I think we’re still a long ways away from that happening. He’ll pull it together and will probably make this deal look like a bargain in a couple of years.

Bad Idea:

Harrison Barnes is a rookie who doesn’t project well, and Klay Thompson is a second year player who wasn’t very good in his first year. In contrast to this, Brandon Rush played at a star level last season, and at an average level during the two seasons before that. Who should get the lion’s share of the minutes? The answer is obvious. But NBA decision-makers — like everyone else — have a problem when it comes to evaluating players based on potential. Most of them would rather play an unknown player who might be productive than an established player who is productive.

Good Idea:

Chicago Bulls signing Taj Gibson to a four year, $38 million contract extension.

Gibson is a bit older than most of the 2009 draftees who are getting extensions — he’s 27 years old — but on a per minute basis he’s been close to equaling Carlos Boozer’s production over the last three years, and in that span Boozer has made over $41 million. The Bulls are probably getting ready to get rid of Boozer through trade or use of the amnesty clause, and Gibson will be a relatively cheap replacement.

Bad Idea:

Chicago Bulls losing a pile of productive players through free agency or trades.

Sure, the Bulls lost Derrick Rose and many expected the Bulls to struggle this year. But if they had managed to keep the rest of their roster intact, the Bulls would’ve been able to make a serious run at winning the Eastern Conference, which is quite weak this season. Instead, the Bulls traded away Kyle Korver and let Ronnie Brewer walk for no reason other than to save a paltry amount of money. They also let Omer Asik go to the Rockets, but that would’ve been a huge amount of money to give to a guy who only played 15 minutes per game for them.

Good Idea:

Toronto Raptors trading for Kyle Lowry.

This is only tangentially related to 2009 draftees signing contract extensions, but we needed to put some good Raptors news in here, as it is a rare occurrence. Lowry played 36 minutes and produced more than half a win by himself during the Raptors home opening loss to the Indiana Pacers. Also good was that the addition of Lowry didn’t completely relegate the excellent Jose Calderon to the bench — Calderon still played 26 minutes and had a WP48 of 0.212 himself. Not too shabby for a guy who they got in excchange for Gary Forbes and a first round draft pick.

Bad Idea:

This is the worst contract extension since the Raptors extended Andrea Bargnani to a five year, $50 million contract in 2009. Wait — you mean to tell me that one man is responsible for both signings? How does that happen? Oh, that’s right, we’re talking about Bryan Colangelo, the Man Who Can Do No Wrong. Like Bargnani, DeRozan is a lottery pick that simply hasn’t panned out. While most young players improve during their first few years in the league, DeRozan has actually gotten worse every single year, which is an impressive feat. He’s a shooting guard who can’t shoot, defend, pass, and rebounds like Steve Nash. But hey, at least the guy can dunk, right? This year there are around 50 players who will make $10 million or more in salary. Is DeRozan anywhere near a top 50 player in this league?

Good Idea:

Milwaukee Bucks not offering Brandon Jennings a contract extension.

Jennings is an overrated scorer and a shoot-first point guard who can’t shoot. Despite the high scoring average, he’s never played at an average level, let alone an above average level. After the Monta Ellis trade, it might be surprising that the Bucks didn’t offer Jennings a pile of money, but it is certainly the right move.

Bad Idea:

Milwaukee Bucks having so many good frontcourt players and so many bad backcourt players.

It’s always good to have productive players, even when you already have productive players playing the same position. But it’s not good to have a surplus of productive players at one position when you have multiple positions without any productive players. The Bucks have four power forward producing at or above an average level, and also picked up centre Samuel Dalembert in the offseason. But most of their guard minutes will go to Brandon Jennings and Monta Ellis this season, and these two are not productive. The Bucks should take advantage of their riches at the PF spot by using them to acquire some more productive guards.

Good Idea:

Sacramento Kings not offering Tyreke Evans a contract extension.

Despite winning the Rookie of the year award, Tyreke Evans has hovered around average in his first three seasons. But you don’t reward average players with contract extensions. What you do is wait and see what offers they get on the open market and match if the terms are reasonable. There is no reason to overpay for lukewarm talent — there are plenty such players at or above that level available in the draft, playingoverseas, or rotting on NBA benches.

Bad Idea:

Sacramento Kings not giving second year PG Isaiah Thomas more playing time.

The Kings’ roster is overrun with guards who can play the point; there’s Tyreke Evans, Isaiah Thomas, Aaron Brooks, and Jimmer Fredette. Of these four players, Thomas’ rookie season has been the most productive. If you are planning on playing two of them at once, play Thomas and Evans, and limit Brooks and Fredette to garbage time as much as possible.

Good Idea:

Charlotte Bobcats not offering any of their 2009 draftees contract extensions.

The Bobcats were historically bad last season; only one of their players produced at an above-average level. None of their 2009 draftees is worth holding onto, let alone extending, and not a single player on their roster should be considered off-limits when it comes to trades. There’s only one team in the NBA who routinely gives out huge extensions to bad players, and it ain’t Charlotte (at least, not yet).

Good Idea:

Both Collison and Beaubois have shown flashes in their first three NBA seasons; they have both been around average in terms of productivity. But as I said before, you don’t reward average players with contract extensions. Let them hit the open market and see what happens.

Bad Idea:

Both are only going to be in Dallas in the short term — and in Curry’s case, this means he might even be gone in a few days — but both of these players haven’t been good throughout most of their careers. Why spend a lot of money on an established player with a poor performance record when you could give an unknown a shot for peanuts?

Good Idea:

Atlanta Hawks and Philadelphia 76ers not extending Jeff Teague

Another young guard who has hovered around average. Postpone any decision about giving him a new contract until he starts getting offers from other teams during the offseason.

Bad Idea:

Atlanta Hawks trading away Marvin Williams.

Marvin Williams actually led the Hawks in total Wins last year, and was the team’s most productive player on a per minute basis. He’s also only 26 years old. Trading him away for Devin Harris, even if it’s strictly a salary dump, is quite puzzling.

Good Idea:

Philadelphia 76ers playing Andrew Bynum and Spencer Hawes together.

Sure, it hasn’t happened yet, but let me be optimistic for a change. If the 76ers play their two best bigs at the same time, that pushes Thaddeus Young to small forward and keeps more good players on the court at the same time. Hawes, who could turn out to be the next LeBron James, is better at shooting from farther away from the basket, and could be the Pau Gasol to Bynum’s Bynum.

Bad Idea:

Philadelphia 76ers signing Jrue Holiday to a four year, $41 million contract extension.

‘Hey look, it’s another young guard who’s hovered around average! Let’s give him $10 million a year for four years!’ Hmmm…how about no? Wait until the offseason instead.

What makes the contracts to middling young guards so bad is the sheer volume of them that were lined up to hit free agency next summer. Someone is going to pick up a Darren Collison / Jeff Teague level player for 5-6 million next summer and come away looking great for the next several years because of it.

I love the Wages of Wins, but don’t you guys ever consider that more stats could be added to the game that could give us a clear picture of what is going on? For instance when you guys refer to the eye test, you mock it dismissively, but our eyes see plenty of valuable things that don’t show up in the box score. For instance: deflections, defense, dunks(which I think have value, for instance, if a team is dunking all over a team, they are normally winning) athleticism etc.

As a basketball player, I would rather play against someone like T. Lawson than R. Westbrook, because Westbrook is much more likely to do something to embarrass you, and once you get embarrassed on court you start playing different. And besides that, playing against some who is the physical is just way more challenging. There are cameras now that are tracking how well a player shoots in certain temperatures, at certain heights while jumping, at certain exhaustion levels, and under pressure.

Basically, while WP48 is my favorite adv stat of them all, i still think you guys are too smug with it. WP48 is the best stat now but in 5 years we’ll probably be tracking the value of things like deflections and dunks that I mentioned above.

Tony,
Your point on the attitude is well taken. We’ll work on that. That said, the problem with the eye test is that without any systematic testing, we can’t trust it. My grad school background actually was in human and computer vision. While impressive both our vision and memory systems have some big flaws. Things like Synergy, SportsVU, which allow people to track and examine the games are great steps forward. And as we’ve shown, we’d love to incorporate more like this into our work. I look forward to when that’s easy to do. Until then, unfortunately the eye test just doesn’t pass for me.

@Tony, the problem with athleticism is that there are players who use their athleticism to win games, like LeBronze. Others use athleticism to create spacing for shots they can’t hit.

For me, that player is Wilson Chandler. He can hit corner 3’s and he can take it to the hole, but man is he in love with mid-range jumpers. Not just the worst shot in basketball, but the worst shot in his repertoire.

For Dre it’s apparently Russell Westbrook. Other people see “the most dynamic athlete in the NBA” or for those who want to acknowledge LeBron “the most dynamic point guard in the NBA”. But if you look at his shot chart he takes just as many mid-range shots as he dunks/layups.

Shouldn’t the most dynamic point guard in the NBA be able to get anywhere on the floor he wants? If he can, why is he taking midrange jumpers that he can’t hit? Is he unaware of how bad he is at it? Has no one explained to him that mid-range jumpers are low percentage shots for which you aren’t awarded an extra point?

At the end of the day the athleticism has to turn into measureables or it is worthless.

I think you are missing the point that these guys are professionals. They have all been dunked on or embarrassed at one point or another but the good ones take it in stride and keep going. How many times have Mutombo and Ben Wallace been dunked on in their careers? They still both blocked a lot of shots after that. At the end of the day if you are good it doesn’t matter if you get dunked on 10 times a game, if you continue to do the things to make your team win it doesn’t matter if you wind up on the bad side of SportsCenter. Rings and wins cure all embarrassment.

Tony,
I totally agree with you and am on the same page. WP48 is a good stat system and probably the best one out there. But it should probably be acknowledged that we are just scratching the surface of a very complicated game. Also, WP48 needs to be recognized as a predictive measure that in general, across the league, captures information that helps predict wins and losses. But that doesn’t mean that it is perfect for every player. There are things within the margin that the stats are not capturing. My favorite example of a failure of the system is that Troy Murphy was ranked as a top five player a few years ago when he actually could not stay on the court because he was just too slow at defense. In the context of a player that had a relatively unique physical limitation that didn’t get captured statistically the stat failed to correctly predict a players contribution. But in general the stat is great.

James, you vastly underestimate the importance of looking good out there and not getting embarrassed to professional athletes. Yes, they have been dunked on and they don’t like. Guys will often not challenge a dunk just so they don’t get dunked on. Why do you think that guys like Shaq, Howard and Drummond don’t shoot their free throws underhand when their overhand shot is clearly broken? It is because a granny free throw won’t look cool. It might deliver a championship for Shaq and Howard, but they won’t do it.

Absolutely love your podcasts and the website. I have a sort of broad question on the implication of your collective work.

Basketball is actually almost a best case for talent evaluation, and it is still so hard for GM’s and owners to properly evaluate and compensate talent within the NBA. This is when there are box scores, and universal rules, and millions of observers of performance, some of whom do nothing but professionally evaluate talent.

What does that imply for “normal” companies when they evaluate and compensate performance of their employees?

I have managed teams of employees in different companies, “performance” is actually measured by some variation of a performance evaluation” in which a manager rates assigns rating on a scale and makes some comments. Obviously P and L owners are evaluated differently, as are some resources like salespeople, but those are special cases.

An analogue would be NBA games being played in closed gyms, only watched by the coach. The owner and others would see the final score but not the game (and perhaps not even the box score.) Then at the end of the year before renegotiating contracts, the coach would fill in his ratings of each player and send them to the owner. Imagining an NBA run like this would probably lead to a lot of strange teams.

Sort of scary isn’t it? Wonder if one could bucket types of jobs into “highly unevaluatable” like a fine artist or “highly evaluatable” like baseball pitchers? And NBA players would be closer to baseball players that say a teacher would be.

Patrick,
This is a genius point and one that I bring up a lot. In sports we have the perfect “real world experiment”. We have a case where money is on the line and all the data is available and how is talent evaluation handled? Less than optimally as we’ve seen. The implications for real world companies that try and evaluate talent where such data isn’t available and the same biases exist is frightening.

Evaluating talent is very difficult in most fields. Even when data is available to analyze, one must be careful to analyze it correctly. Some fields have made great strides in this area, but still most are behind the times.

Basketball is just starting to get there, and there are still tons of myths and misconceptions to debunk, even among those who are in important positions (like a GM or coach). And as you point out, basketball is a lot more clear cut than most fields.

I’m glad you mentioned teachers in your comment; I’m a Canadian B.Ed. graduate who’s afraid of the effect that American “rethinks” of education are going to have on teaching. People are — incorrectly — using numbers to evaluate teaching effectiveness, with negative consequences. If we can’t get such an important thing sorted out, I don’t have much hope for business and sports. That being said, i’m still going to fight the good fight as much as I can.

The writer must not have followed the sixers last year Jrue was clearly a top 15 PG last season and with iggy and lou taking up the PG dutys much more than they should have been.
this year without such a leash jrue has exploded into a top 3 at best top 7 at worst PG
Average? what a joke